Dragan Covic

They warn that years of political divisions, zero-sum games, distrust and poor communication between local leaders, as well as growing tensions among key regional and global actors, have left Bosnia a ticking time-bomb that could go off at any moment, leading to the collapse of the remaining joint institutions or even the breakup of the country.

The deadline agreed between the leaders of thre three main parties in Bosnia on forming a state-level government - the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD - expired on Thursday.

The deep summer season is not yet over, but with Presidential elections due in November in Romania, political life is heating up. With the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) having quit the Social Democratic Party (PSD) led government, the PSD now finds itself without an absolute majority in Parliament.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has threatened to torpedo a number of major achieved reforms in the country, including the formation of joint armed forces and a state court and police agency, unless a state-level government is formed soon.

In a move that surprised many, Bosnia's three most powerful political leaders - Bakir Izetbegovic, Milorad Dodik and Dragan Covic - announced a landmark deal to form a government at the central state level. The announcement comes ten months after elections were held.

This situation is even more remarkable given even a cursory glance at global aluminum prices. While aluminum prices have not fully recovered from their peak just before the 2008 financial crisis, they have returned to their price point in the early 2000s - which is higher than what the metal was trading for during most of the 1980s and 1990s.

Milorad Dodik, the Serbian member of the state presidency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has called a session of parliament in Bosnia's Serb-led entity, Republika Srpska, where he will urge MPs to block a lawsuit against Croatia over the issue of the Peljesac Bridge.

Representatives of former wartime prisoners in the southern town of Stolac said that the anniversary march on Thursday organised by Bosnia and Herzegovina's main Croat party, the Croatian Democratic Union, sent a "dangerous message".

The HDZ and its sister party in Bosnia and Herzegovina have long advocated ethnically 'federalising' Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is in line with the HDZ's embrace of convicted war criminals who took part in a joint effort to carve up the country with Bosnian Serb separatists during the 1992-95 war.

"We did not talk about any names, as that decision will be discussed in the following weeks," Adisa Omerbegovic Arapovic, the vice president of SBB, said in Sarajevo on Thursday, answering questions about whether Radoncic was promised the Bosnian Ministry of Security.